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Boeotia

(Encyclopedia)Boeotia bēōˈshə [key], region of ancient Greece. It lay N of Attica, Megaris, and the Gulf of Corinth. The early inhabitants were from Thessaly. A number of small cities scattered over the rough c...

Bishop, Elizabeth

(Encyclopedia)Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911–79, American poet, b. Worcester, Mass., grad. Vassar, 1934. During the 1950s and 60s she lived in Brazil, eventually returning to her native New England, where she taught at ...

Verlaine, Paul

(Encyclopedia)Verlaine, Paul pōl vĕrlĕnˈ [key], 1844–96, French poet. He gained some notice with the Parnassian poetry of Poèmes saturniens (1866) and Fêtes galantes (1869) and became a figure in the bohemi...

Latin literature

(Encyclopedia)Latin literature, the literature of ancient Rome and of that written in Latin in later eras. Very little remains of the ritualistic songs and the native poetry of the Romans and Latins before the rise...

deconstruction

(Encyclopedia)deconstruction, in linguistics, philosophy, and literary theory, the exposure and undermining of the metaphysical assumptions involved in systematic attempts to ground knowledge, especially in academi...

existentialism

(Encyclopedia)existentialism ĕgzĭstĕnˈshəlĭzəm, ĕksĭ– [key], any of several philosophic systems, all centered on the individual and his relationship to the universe or to God. Important existentialists o...

Lamb, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Lamb, Charles, 1775–1834, English essayist, b. London. He went to school at Christ's Hospital, where his lifelong friendship with Coleridge began. Lamb was a clerk at the India House from 1792 to 18...

Mallarmé, Stéphane

(Encyclopedia)Mallarmé, Stéphane stāfänˈ mälärmāˈ [key], 1842–98, French poet. Mallarmé's great importance is as the chief forebear of the symbolists; the influence of his poetry was particularly felt b...

Kinsella, Thomas

(Encyclopedia) Kinsella, Thomas , 1928-2021, Irish poet and translator, b. Inchicore, Dublin. Kinsella studied at Dublin's University College and began working as a c...

Hopkins, Gerard Manley

(Encyclopedia)Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844–89, English poet, educated at Oxford. Entering the Roman Catholic Church in 1866 and the Jesuit novitiate in 1868, he was ordained in 1877. Upon becoming a Jesuit he bur...